This disclosure relates to management of a shared wireless communication interface and in particular to context-dependent allocation of shared resources between different communication technologies.
“Smart” phones allow users to do a number of different tasks more easily and efficiently than ever before. For example, smart phones typically include a cellular voice interface that allows the user to make and receive phone calls and a cellular data interface that allows the user to access the Internet. Most smart phones may also include other wireless communication interfaces, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or the like. Another service that smart phones typically provide is a location (or position) determination service using a global navigation satellite system (GNSS), such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) developed in the US, the Russian GLONASS system, or other similar systems that may be deployed in the future. The location determination service may operate by receiving signals from the GNSS satellites and using the signals to determine location coordinates for the device. The location coordinates can be provided to map applications or other applications executing on the smart phone that can make use of the user's geographic location.
Each of these communication interfaces requires hardware resources, such as an antenna, associated circuitry to support the antenna (e.g., modulators, demodulators, amplifiers), and processing logic (e.g., encoders, decoders, etc.), to generate signals and/or interpret received signals.